Those Who Sleep in the Dust
by butfearitself
Summary: What might have happened after the S3 finale. At this point, since we're on S4, I suppose it's AU. Sookie and Eric are running for their lives from the Queen and falling for each other, but life and love aren't as simple as they seem. Rated M.
1. Chapter 1

"_Do you think God made you?" she asked, twirling a bit of hair around her fingers. She liked to do that while she thought: it grounded her. Kept her in the world and not in her fantasies of what the world could be like if, if, if._

_ He smiled down at her. Silly. "God doesn't exist," he said. "But if he did, I doubt he'd have made me. He'd have had more sense than that."_

_ "No," she said. "All of you. Did God make vampires? Did Satan? Who decided that you would walk the earth instead of lying in the dust?"_

_ "Ah," he said with a chuckle, and shook his head. "Who made anything? Who made you, a woman so beautiful and strange? Does it matter, lover?"_

_ "I suppose not. Not really. But I wonder, sometimes."_

_ "Of course you do." He pulled her to him. "You're curious, still. You haven't been around long enough for all that wonder to erode into weariness."_

_ "I hope I never am," she said, looking up at him, shivering. "It sounds awful."_

_ "It was. Until I met you."_

The deck of the ferry was slick with rain and seaspray, halfway between water and ice. He had given her green wellies in anticipation of the constant cold and wet, but they were doing little to protect her. She'd already slipped once in a puddle and tumbled to the deck, and her forehead bore a round purple bruise from the railing that kept passengers from the frothing iron-grey sea below. He had been inside - she couldn't stand the confinement, not now, even the rain was better - and hadn't managed to sprint out to her before she fell. He had growled in anger and raised his fist, holding her close to him, but there was nothing for his anger: it was precisely as useful to shout at the clouds as at God himself. The clouds, for their part, moved across the moon like ghosts, unseeing.

The bruise joined a procession of the same, snaking down her neck and across her arms, down her back, across her legs. A toe was broken and lay bound to its neighbour, throbbing in her boot.

_That's what happens when you trust vampires, _she thought.

"No. That's what happens when you trust Bill," Eric said.

She had spoken out loud. He was hurt, she knew it, but she was too weary to take it back. Perhaps she didn't want to.

"I am sorry," she said, though.

He took her arm, gently, gently, and guided her inside. The ferry would approach Prince Edward Island in another hour. It was early fall and the air was already cold this far north, not bitterly but soggily, drearily. In Charlottetown, this was the weather that brought daydreams of hot chocolate by the fire, and damp socks drying woolen and fuzzy over radiators. For Sookie, the Canadian sea was an alien landscape and the air was a sodden nightmare. A wave of spray crested and soaked her further, and she shivered. He didn't.

"Did it have to be Canada? This isn't my kind of place," she said. She knew the answer, but wanted to make sure he heard her displeasure. "I like the warmth."

"No one else wants to come here, either," he replied. "It's safe. Or, at least, as safe a place as I can find. I have a little farm here."

"Of all places."

"The red sand is beautiful in summer," he said. "The towns are... quaint. Lots of corn, lots of cows. Not much traffic, no pollution. Few to no vamps. No bullshit."

"There's bullshit everywhere," she said.

"Of course. But this is where I am taking you, and this is where you'll be for a while."

"With you?"

He gave her a half-smile. "Where else would I be?"

"I don't know. Your bar? With Pam? With anyone other than me?"

"You underestimate how drawn I am to you," he said.

"Maybe so."

"Don't do that anymore."

They were quiet. She thought of Bill, left behind his house in chains. He had cried as he beat her, sobbed until his shirt was red. The Queen had stood behind him. She trembled as she thought of her smile, her wet red mouth, white teeth and enormous fangs, as he hit her. He had cried out with each strike, each time his fist met her body. "I am sorry," he'd cried to her, over and over. "I am so sorry. I am so sorry. So sorry." And yet he had done it, and the Queen had watched. And she'd watched from the ground, battered and half-drained, as the Queen had chained him to the porch. She had taken Sookie's blood, so much of it.

She had passed out.

And woken up in a car driven by Eric Northman, paler even than a glacier, speeding, getting her out of there. After she had sent him away, he had come back, found her, saved her.

Was Bill alive? She did not know. Was the Queen? She hoped not. What she did know was that Eric had somehow found her, picked her up, taken her away, across the border, across a small sliver of ocean, and was now holding her. And now he was propelling her through a set of glass doors into the ferry's cabin.

Inside, a few other drenched souls sat on red plastic chairs, while the smarter ones, dry, read various drugstore-counter books. No one looked at anyone else, and no one's thoughts were anything but dull. The interior was lit by fluorescent bulbs, the energy-saving kind, and Eric's skin glowed skim-milk blue. He was hale but weary.

"It's warmer in here," he said. "That matters to you."

"Not to you?"

"Only inasmuch as it stops you from shivering."

"Are they alive?"

It was the question she had been afraid to ask. She didn't want the answer, not really.

"I don't know," he said. She'd been hoping he'd say that.

"Will she come after me?"

"I expect so," he said, low. "But I won't allow her to find you. And I won't allow him, either."

Part of her thrilled with relief, and part of her grieved. She closed her eyes and a vision of Bill's face appeared behind her eyelids, lighting the dark. He was smiling, and then he was crying. He was looking at her tenderly, asking her to be his wife. His face, lit by firelight, as he had bitten her, made love to her. Admitting to her that he had lied to her, that he had allowed her to be beaten, he had been ordered to love her. _(No... ordered to pretend. Not ordered to love.) _He was tumbling onto the grass as she screamed at him, as she released the anger and humiliation of the lie.

Then had come the faeries - and then he'd dragged her back, across the void, calling through her blood, calling her. She had run to him, left Claudine to call after her. Stupid. Awful. How could she have been such an idiot, after all he'd done to her, after all she'd discovered, little by little?

"Shhhhh," said a voice beside her. Eric's.

"When did you learn to be so kind?" she asked him.

"I am not kind. But I owe you. You did this for me. It's... fair."

"That's all?"

For a long moment, he was very still. The fluorescent bulbs hummed and the rain beat at the windows, the other passengers sighed and muttered. Damp hung in the air and, idly, the toe bound to her broken one itched. Then he said, "No. That's not all."

Her heart, already bruised, began to beat, and it hurt.

"When we arrive, we'll talk further. We have a long night ahead of us, and we are likely being pursued. I need to think. For now, rest."

She did.

A car was waiting for them at the ferry, a silver Mercedes sedan. "Perhaps a bit too flashy for the island," Eric said, but bundled her into it anyway, and got into the driver's seat. The heated seat did little to stop her shivering. Warm damp was still damp.

They drove to a tiny farmhouse off a dirt road about an hour from the ferry dock. It was in the middle of the island: not a seashore in sight, "and hidden from tourists," he said. As dawn approached, he showed her into the root cellar he had converted. Down a ladder hidden in the pantry of a kitchen that had seen better days in the 70s. "Best stay in here with me," he told her. "You'll be sleeping days for a while, anyhow."

"I need to call Sam," she said, numbly. "I need to get home."

"Neither of those things will be happening for a while," he said. He brought blankets and a sleeping bag down for her and made a small nest, then locked the trapdoor to the first floor. "I am sorry." He reached out to her, held her for a long moment, and shut the interior door. She was alone in the basement.

"You said we'd talk further when we got where we were going," she called into the darkness.

"We're not there yet," came the muffled voice, and then deep silence.

Sadness and anger warred with fear and grief, all of it blanketed by sleep. The short nap on the ferry had not been enough. Her cellphone, soaked but still working, would not connect: it would be impossible to get a signal this far out in the country, or perhaps it was because they were underground. No matter. She was cut off completely.

She cried as she drifted off, tears soaking her shirt, which was filthy with blood and earth. There was no pillow. Vampires had no need of such things.

She thought of Bill, who she had loved, and of Eric, who she had not. The earth was shifting and rending beneath her, she knew, as sleep found her.


	2. Chapter 2

_The moon was high, the stars bright and dappled through the cutout shadows of treetops. They walked, leaves rustling in their wake, hand in hand._

_ "Why doesn't the moon hurt you?"_

_ He startled at the broken silence between them, and at the question. "Why should it?"_

_ "Well, moonlight is just reflected sunlight, isn't it?"_

_ "I suppose so."_

_ "And starlight is just the light of other suns."_

_ "Other, far more distant suns, yes. Much too weak to hurt me. I suppose the moon is, too."_

_ "So there's a lower limit to the amount of light that will burn you?"_

_ "Lover," he said, "I don't know. By rights, firelight or lamplight should kill me, but it doesn't. I don't know why the sun burns me and the moon does not. Maybe electromagnetic radiation, or gamma rays, or something like that. But I have no desire to find out."_

_ They walked in silence for a while longer. The wind blew cool-cold about them, with just enough chill to make her wish he was warmer when he put his arm around her and pulled her close to him. He kissed the top of her hair and sent a thrill through her._

_ "I wish you could come out in the sun with me," she said._

_ "I wish that, too."_

She woke screaming, clawing at the blankets that wrapped her. A terrible bird with red eyes and black feathers had been tearing her flesh and pecking at her eyes. Dream-pain dissolved as she exploded into wakefulness, but the image remained, burned onto the backs of her eyelids. When she blinked, the bird stared at her, cocked its head, seemed to grin.

She wanted Bill. _No, she didn't. _Yes, she did. She wanted him to enfold her in his arms so she could smell him, so his body could act as a buffer between her and the world, as it had done so many times. He'd been a rock, a silent monolith in a sea of angry and hurt and amused and lustful thoughts, a sea that always surrounded her. He had loved her. _Pretended to love. _No, he had loved her. But he had hurt her and betrayed her, and he had beaten her as his Queen watched, as she had willed him to. There could be no forgiveness for him.

She was sick of tears. There was no purpose to them, other than to make her throat hurt and her body shake. The facts: Bill had loved her, and she had loved him. Loved him still. The physical bond between them remained, deep and thick and fundamental as blood, even as their relationship had been broken. She wished she could rip out the part of her that loved him and leave it, bleeding, on the ground. Bury it in the cemetery alongside Gran's body. Leave clean and whole, sore but healing.

It wouldn't be so easy.

"Only way out is through," said his voice from behind the door. Eric stepped out, brushing cobwebs and dust from his hair. "If there's one thing I've learned in a thousand years, it's that."

"I don't want your advice," she said.

He shrugged. "Please take it in the spirit it's given. I don't like seeing you like that."

There was anger in her, roiling, and it found the nearest target. "Don't talk to me. You took me away from him, and now I don't even know if he's dead or alive."

An eyebrow raised. Was he hiding hurt feelings? She didn't care, in that moment. "Gracious. And thankful. Nice. I suppose I should have left you to his careful ministrations."

"If I'd died, I'd hurt less."

"That's true." He turned from her, went back inside his hole, came out with a packed bag. "We should be on the move shortly."

Had she expected him to come to her, give her a kiss on the forehead, hold her, tell her that it would be okay? That was what Bill would have done. But Bill would have been lying, had been lying all the time. Maybe nothing would be okay.

Nevertheless, the anger drained from her, leaving a choking silt around her heart. Sadness and despair. She felt heavy, unwieldy. Exhausted, despite a decent day's sleep.

"It's grief," said Eric, watching her. "I know."

"You don't know grief," she spat.

"That is untrue. But we'll talk about that later. For now, we need to go."

What was she looking for? She didn't know whether she wanted him to yell at her, to shove her, or to hug her. Maybe kiss her. All she knew was that she wanted some reaction, and he was stone. Cold hard stone, as she'd once accused him in a dream. He'd smiled at that, a knowing, amused smile. He'd spent a thousand years getting to know himself.

She pulled on her boots and picked up the blankets. "Is there anywhere to wash these?"

"Don't worry about those." He stopped and looked at her. "But you need some clean clothes."

"You have spare women's clothes here?" Somehow, she wasn't surprised. "And at least, let me take these to the laundry room. I couldn't possibly do anything less."

They ascended the rickety ladder that led to the main floor of the little farmhouse. The place smelled of damp and gentle decay, of straw that was many years old and carpet that was half mildew. Eric obviously didn't make a habit of coming here. An ancient washer and dryer sat quietly in a corner of the mudroom that led to the side entrance, and she stuffed the dusty sheets on top of the washer; for later, she supposed, whenever later was.

"Wait here," he said, and disappeared upstairs, returning in a minute with a heavy grey wool sweater and a pair of Levis that looked like they'd seen the original Gold Rush.

She wasn't picky, though, and they looked warm. She ducked past him, through the kitchen and into the tiny bathroom, and shed her torn and bloodied clothes. The wool smelled of straw and barely remembered sweat, the jeans of horses and dust. It was all clean, though. Just... permeated with this place.

She knotted her hair into a ponytail at the base of her neck and stepped out.

"Beautiful," he said with a small smile.

"I feel like a farmer's wife."

"You look like one. A beautiful one."

This man standing before her - he was himself beautiful, was he not? Had he not kissed her? Had he not saved her? Had he not been honest with her, always?

_"I am sorry for your suffering. I thought you had the right to know."_

But he had locked her up, had drunk from her, had betrayed her, too.

"I have no haven," she said, out loud.

Eric shook his head. "I am sorry to hear you say that. And I am sorry for what I had to do at the bar. Truly."

She looked at him, really _looked, _for the first time since she'd awoken in the front seat of his speeding car. His eyes were blue and shining. He leaned his body towards her as if to protect her from the wind that roared and the rain that still beat upon the house.

He had drunk from her, unwillingly, at the bar. She had drunk from him, unwillingly, in Texas. But much had happened since then.

She knew in the deepest part of her, that he was safe, at least for right now.

As if echoing her, he said, "If anything were to happen to you, it would pain me more than I could say."

He held out his hand and she took it, tentatively. He pulled her to him. His contentment in the midst of fear found a strange echo in her, and she knew that they were joined somehow, by blood. The deep silence of his mind was filled by the roar of the rain.

In the same place in her, that place newly discovered, she _knew _that Bill was alive. She pushed that aside, for now.

* * *

The first to reach them was the first to die.

He was waiting for them in the driver's seat of the silver Mercedes; tinted windows in the Maritime night may hide all manner of things. Eric unlocked the door remotely, making the car beep, and opened the door. As Sookie approached her own side, she saw him fall backwards with the blow.

She screamed his name, panic rising in her. It felt to her as if the boulder she was clinging to had crumbled, and she was being swept away. For a few moments it was as if the world had ended.

Then the Viking rose, as he always had. He shook his head, his hair flying, and pulled a dark humanlike shape from the seat. Everything was cold and wind and rain, lit dimly by the eerie glow of the moon, diffused through layers of cloud.

The two men fought hand-to-hand. It was difficult to make out anything, though she heard a strangled grunt from the other man and a roar from Eric, and a faint pain-that-was-not-pain lanced across her side. Two shadows feinted and ducked and crashed into each other. Finally, Eric landed a blow to the other's jaw and sent him tumbling over the hood of the car, into the glare of its headlights.

She recognized him, vaguely, from the bar. Tomas. He'd been an occasional bar-back on her visits and had tended to stand in the corner, black hair hiding his face. Tall, shriveled, his skin taut with repressed violence. He was vampire-young but had never been good at mainstreaming.

Had no one explained to him the law of age, as it applied to vampires?

It happened so quickly that she couldn't turn her head to avoid the sight: she didn't have enough warning. Eric picked up a stick from the ground, an ordinary small branch, and precisely, almost delicately, sunk it into the other's chest as if it were an acupuncture needle. Tomas exploded in a shower of blood and tissue, spattering the car and Eric and the gravel and the rain-sodden field.

Nausea fought with an echo of triumph. She willed herself not to throw up. She didn't have anything in her stomach, anyhow. How long had it been since she'd eaten? "Perish the thought," she said aloud, just to fill the terrible silence that followed battle.

"That was stupid," Eric said. She gaped at him.

"I meant," he said, "I should have kept him alive for a while."

"But you know who sent him, don't you?" she asked, her voice unsteady. Already the adrenaline was subsiding. She did feel sick.

"Of course. This isn't a mystery. This is a pursuit. But it would have been fun to teach him never to look a gift horse, and all that. I was good to him, and this is how he repaid me." He was walking in small circles in the rain, scrubbing the blood from his arms. Finally, seeing a lost cause, he removed his shirt entirely and wrung it out, hard. His white skin was luminous.

"What good would that have done?"

"Would have made me feel better."

She was afraid to admit to herself that she felt the same way: Tomas' death was not a waste, nor was it a tragedy. It was a natural consequence. Gran would have been ashamed. She was ashamed of herself, but she did not fight the feeling.

He stood in the faint light, wet with rain and sweat and blood, nearly another light source. Despite her grief, she marveled at his beauty, and remembered the kiss at the bar. _For another time. When it's not raining and we didn't just narrowly escape an ambush._

Her stomach growled and he was suddenly startled. He looked down at himself and then at her. "When did you last eat?" he asked.

"I don't remember."

"I am... Oh, I am sorry. Forgive me for the oversight. It's been a long time since I've needed food in a traditional sense."

"It's okay. Considering that most of the food you encounter is peanut butter and butter sandwiches."

He wrinkled his nose. "That sounds foul. Did Ginger give you one of those?"

"I refused. I think I'd rather wither away than eat one."

"Let's make sure neither of those things happen."

He walked around to the passenger door of the car and opened it for her, motioning her inside. As the door opened the light came on, and she checked for blood or tissue or forgotten weapons. Nothing. She sat, squelching, the attempt at dry clothes having failed. He followed, getting into the driver's seat, belting them both in, and bringing the car to life.

They drove into the night as the rain washed the earth clean. There would be no trace of Tomas by dawn.


	3. Chapter 3

Note: the song lyrics used in this chapter are from Joanna Newsom, "In California."

Thank you to those who've been reading and commenting. This is my first foray into fanfiction and it's gratifying and humbling to know that you're reading along and enjoying.

* * *

_They lay on the ground together, after, lazily playing with each other's fingers. She reached over and curled the fine, blonde hair on his chest around her fingers, took his hand and brought it to her mouth, kissed it. _

_ "I still don't understand why it's so good with you."_

_ He smiled, satisfied with himself. "Because I'm wonderful."_

_ "And I'm not?"_

_ "Of course you are. There is no one more wonderful than you."_

_ "Don't you sometimes find it... empty, though? After a thousand years?"_

_ "Not inherently." He got up on one elbow, looked at her. "Sex is empty if it has no meaning. It is empty if it is without feeling. Sometimes that's not a bad thing. It has its place. But with you, it is never empty."_

_ "Even though it will never result in anything?"_

_ "What do you mean?"_

_ A pause. "Never mind. Don't worry about it."_

_ "Really. Tell me. What do you mean?"_

* * *

As it turned out, there wasn't much open in central Prince Edward Island after dark. After driving for what seemed to a hungry Sookie to be hours, they found a Petro Canada station that carried sad-looking sandwiches and cold drinks. The bread was bland and the tuna salad teetering on the edge of going sour, but it was food and it would have to do.

"Get several," Eric told her. "I don't want to be caught unprepared."

"But these are gross," she complained.

"You can eat them, right? Buy them. I'm not sure when we'll be able to get more."

"But how will we refrigerate..."

"Buy them."

He paid, of course, but she wished heartily for something more filling. Or, at least, something more familiar. Crawfish, maybe, or pecan pie. Food for the spirit as well as the body. But, she supposed, if her spirit had to starve, at least her body wouldn't.

Back in the car, she asked him, "Where are we going?"

"Better you don't know," he said, without looking at her.

She settled into the seat, knowing better than to argue with him, and without energy for the fight it would take to draw anything out of him right now. Her clothes were still wet from the rain, which had finally stopped and left a cold freshness in the air; she shivered. Eric noticed the small movement and turned on her seat-heater, squeezed her hand gently, and drove.

Fields flashed past the window, lit briefly and faintly by the car's headlights and the diffused light of the clouds. All the cows would be in their barns now, all the chickens curled in their roosts, the ducks in the reeds at the edges of ponds.

What she could not hear was other people, and she realized, suddenly, that she felt more free than she had in a very long time. The silence in her head was complete out here, and so restful that she found herself slipping into a near-meditative state. She felt _whole_, without intrusion, without the bad company of other people's idiosyncrasies. Finally alone with herself.

Of course, the good company of Eric had something to do with it: he left her be, without demands. Bill had needed her in a way that sometimes threatened to drown her: she was his only link to his humanity, his "miracle", and the burden of his love and need had lain heavy on her. But Eric needed nothing from her, at least not now. No reassurance or declarations of love. Just her simple presence, alive and well.

Eric had the radio tuned to the CBC: "Radio 2", the show hostess called it, and she wondered idly where Radio 1 was. It was the late-night show, devoted to the spooky and weird and otherwise fringe. A woman was singing a haunting, meandering song: she knew she'd heard the voice before, but couldn't place it.

_There is another, who is a little older_

_When I broke my bone, he carried me up from the riverside_

_To spend my life in spitting distance of the love that I have known_

_I must stay here, in an endless eventide._

* * *

She didn't realize she'd fallen asleep until she awoke when the car slowed to a stop. Blinking and rubbing her eyes, pinching sleep from her eyelashes, she peered out the window. They had stopped at the edge of a dirt road that slashed its way haphazardly across a canola field. Everything on all sides was dark. Sookie was no stranger to the rural, but this place seemed not only cold but dying. The year was winding down; in Bon Temps the flowers withered and the leaves fell, but here, she knew, winter was different.

"A dead landscape in suspended animation," said Eric. "Or nearly so. When the snow falls, everything will be quiet. No one will come out here for a very long time."

"Please tell me we're not staying here for the winter," she said.

"Of course not."

A tiny building stood alone in the field about a quarter-mile distant. Eric stepped out of the car and came around to open the door for her, reaching a hand in to help her rise. He gripped her, and she stood and fell against him; her legs were asleep from the journey. It was a comfort to her that he held her, and it seemed to comfort him as well. He stroked her hair for a moment before letting go.

The ground sucked at their shoes, but only gently; the flowers' roots and dying leaves made a soft and rustling carpet for them. The building itself was a small house, barely bigger than a shed, with a trapdoor in the floor. It contained an old wooden rocking chair and a bookshelf with half the books scattered across the floor, and, oddly, a dirt-encrusted flowered teapot in the corner, lying on its side. Old rust-coloured stains peppered the walls.

"What happened here? Why is this place even here?"

"You don't want to know," Eric said.

"Yes I do."

"No," he said, "you don't. It's not for someone of your constitution." He lifted the trapdoor and motioned to her. "Ladies first."

"No, thank you. I'm not going down there without you."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself." And disappeared into the hole.

As soon as she'd descended into the darkness - a frayed rope ladder uncurled, when pulled, from two rusted hooks in the door's latch - Eric's cellphone rang, a small light in the pitch-dark. Immediately she grabbed for her own cellphone and looked to see if it had a connection - but no, still no signal.

"Hello?" Eric said.

Silence.

"I can't tell you where I am. They'll try to torture it out of you."

Silence.

"The Magister was unimaginative. I doubt you'll get away with nearly-pierced eyelids if Sophie-Anne finds out that you know something."

Silence.

"Sookie's with me, yes. She's fine. We're both fine. We're just disappearing for a while, until everything blows over."

High-pitched squeaking from the phone.

"Don't call her that. You are my child, but I have limits, and you know I am sensitive when it comes to her."

Squawk.

"Don't call me that, either."

More squeaking.

"I don't know where Bill is. He's not with you or the Queen?"

Silence.

"Business as usual. Tomas was never good at his job, anyway. Get one of those Dutch girls to do it. And keep a low profile. As far as you're concerned, you haven't spoken to me."

He flipped the phone closed and the light went out. All was blackness, until a sharp blue beam pierced the dark. The emergency flashlight from the car.

"What did Pam say?" Sookie asked.

"I'd rather not tell you. You wouldn't like it."

That was it.

"Let me get this straight, Eric Northman," she snapped. His face was half-illuminated in the beam of the flashlight. "You won't tell me where we are. You won't tell me where we're going. You won't let me call my boss, or my brother, or my friends, or anyone back home. You won't tell me when I might be able to go back. And you won't even tell me what sort of ugly things Pam is saying about me."

"I'm sorry, Sookie."

"So now we're on the run, in _Canada_, and I'm eating disgusting tuna sandwiches and wearing wet clothes and I'm cold and I'm miserable and I want to go home!" She fought the tears, but her mouth twisted against her will, and her eyes began to burn. "Goddamnit, I miss Bill! I hate him for what he did, but oh my God, I miss him. I miss being loved. No one had ever loved me before, not really. And now I'm cold and wet and in a hole in a field somewhere and no one is ever going to love me again."

"Sookie," he said. "That isn't true."

"How do you know?" she snarled at him.

He came to her and looked at her silently, started to say something and stopped. He gathered her into his arms.

"Trust me," he said, softly, into her ear. She shivered.

He let her go, turned away and was swallowed by the darkness for a moment. A small fire flared to life behind him, and the room, as such, was illuminated: a sisal rug, a stone firepit with rough "chimney" - a hole carved into the ceiling, through which she could see smoke and sparks rising - and nothing else.

"I suppose this is as good a time to talk as any," he said. "Sookie, please remember this: I would never harm you, and I will protect you until I meet the true death. If you trust nothing else, trust that. But I don't know that you're going to like what you're about to hear."


	4. Chapter 4

Note: many apologies for the long delay.

* * *

_The lights of Bergen twinkled below them. A fjord carved its slow way through the heart of the city. It was a silent emptiness in the midst of plenty._

"_But you're not from around here, are you?" she asked._

"_No," he said. "This isn't my home. But it's close enough for now. And it's beautiful, isn't it?"_

"_Of course it is."_

"_This part of the world. There's something about it that puts my bones at ease. It's the cold, maybe, or the rain, or the _space_. The vast space. I feel like I can breathe here, more than anywhere else."_

"_Even though you don't need to?"_

"_Perhaps especially so."_

_The rain fell, as it always did this time of year._

_

* * *

_

"I can't even imagine what you're about to say," she said. She sat a small distance from the fire. The sparks rose like tiny stars, flickering to dust as they met the cool air above. The flames reminded her of bonfires in high school: she used to go with Jason, the weird younger sister of the star jock, watching from the shadows. Now she felt similarly marginalized. It was her fate, she thought, to live on the fringes of existence forever. Always to be the odd one.

She imagined Eric knew how she felt, in some way.

"As much as I don't want to say this," Eric said, "Bill did love you. But you have to understand that love means something different to vampires. Well, to most vampires."

"I know that," Sookie said. "How could I not? Normal people don't drink your blood when they have sex with you."

"It's not about that," he said. "I am past this stage, and for me, love is... not easy, not common, but possible. But in the first few hundred years of one's vampire life, love becomes - I don't know how to say it. Darkened, maybe. Not impossible, but darkened. Like looking at love through murky water."

"I don't even know what that means."

"It's impossible for you to understand, I think, unless you've been in our position." Eric sat close to her, but did not touch her. The two of them looked at each other. Their eyes collected the firelight, made it molten. "That's not all. I imagine that Bill loved you, perhaps loves you still. But love, to him, does not mean the same as love, to you."

"I still don't understand." Her heart pounded, rhythmically, as if she was on the edge of a precipice.

"What I mean," he said, "is that even if he loved you, he would not have been able to remain loyal to you.

"You mean he would have cheated?"

"Not 'cheat', exactly. I'm not talking about another woman." He stopped for a moment, gathering his words, choosing them carefully. She could not breathe. "Sookie, he betrayed you. He was always going to."

"Sophie-Anne made him do it."

"I'm not talking about that," Eric said. "I'm trying to tell you." He paused, clenched his fists, shook his head. "Sookie. Humans aren't the only ones who become addicted. Humans aren't the only ones who buy blood."

"I know that. Remember? I fought a whole bunch of crazy V-addicted werewolves."

"Sookie, it is... difficult for me to articulate this. I am sorry. I become angry when I think about it. But I'm not talking about vampire blood."

It hit her.

"He was going to sell my _blood?"_

She felt sick, sicker than she ever had in her life. "I'm dizzy," she said, matter-of-factly. Her legs found that they could no longer support her and gave up, sending her tumbling over, nearly into the fire.

Eric, faster than any human reflex, caught her. He did not hold her, though, but rather helped her to sit. He sat, too, facing her. One hand reached out and caught both of hers. "I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this is true, and that I am the one to tell you. Despite some of my... behaviour... over the past several months, I have only ever wanted the best for you. And I want only to protect you. I considered hiding this from you. But you are a grown woman and I believe you deserve the truth."

For a long time she couldn't speak. A flood of choking sorrow paralyzed her, filled her throat. She felt oddly numb, as if a small part of her was watching, dispassionately, as the rest of her suffered.

"Sookie?" Eric said. She looked up at him and his face was full of worry, his eyes intent. He looked at her with more genuine concern, more real feeling, she thought, than Bill had ever shown her.

"He was going to sell my blood. Sell my blood," she said, tasting the words.

The dam broke.

* * *

She'd been "cried out" before in her life, she thought: that wrung-out place where tears simply cease to exist, and sobs come dry and miserable. As it turned out, she hadn't known the meaning of the word until that night.

They had slept through the day, Eric's arms around her, but it was no comfort. Perhaps soon it would be. She could feel things settling into place, with him, and she could not sleep if he was not holding her. But for now, at least, she was in mourning.

Now, just a few minutes after nightfall, the car sped across the field, bumping along across the bowed bodies of canola stalks, and screeched out onto the road.

"I don't understand why you never told me." Sookie was curled defensively, like a snail, in the passenger seat. He'd wrapped her in the thick sweater from the farmhouse.

"I didn't know until the night he beat you. He told me, after some... convincing."

Despite everything, she hurt at the suggestion that Bill had suffered. She shoved it away. "And why did you wait until now to tell me? Why didn't you tell me when I woke up in your car?"

"That was by design," he said. "Over the years, I've found that distance helps one to organize one's thoughts, without the immediacy of fear or passion. It makes for an easier conversation."

"This was never going to be an easy conversation," she said. "There's no easy way to talk, or to think, about it."

"Easier, though."

"For me," she said, with an edge of accusation, "or for you?"

"For both of us, Sookie. I wanted to get you away from Bon Temps before I said anything to you. I wanted to make sure I could keep you safe, that Bill wouldn't be able to get to you. He is an addict. Addiction functions in vampires much the same way it does in humans. He would never have let you be, and those who were relying on him for what he was going to provide to them would never have let him be. I refuse," he said with finality, jaw set, "to allow him to harm you."

She opened her mouth to speak, and the tires of the car hit the dirt road. An explosion sent the vehicle soaring, tilting, wheeling. Eric had time only to shield her body from the worst of the flame before her head hit the dashboard and a burst of colour before her eyes faded into dark. She heard Eric shout something, then another voice, and then the silence of unconsciousness.


	5. Chapter 5

Dear readers (if I have any left): my apologies for the long, long, long delay. I suppose this is AU at this point. Let's leave the amnesiac version of Eric for the show, shall we? Here, he's got his memories and he isn't going to lose them.

Suffice to say that things get busy when you have a new baby who doesn't sleep.

On to the story.

* * *

_The setting sun bled into the waves outside their window. A thin breeze stirred the curtains and set them to swaying, a gauzy scrim against the reddish light. It was enough protection, it seemed. _

_ "Are you awake?"_

_ "Yes," he said with a yawn. His eyes fluttered open and he took her in, smiled at her._

_ "Do you ever get sick of sunset?"_

_ "Do you ever get sick of the dawn?"_

* * *

She floated. She felt as if her head was lower than the rest of her body, as if someone had tilted her down on a cloud.

"Sookie."

Sure, that was her, she supposed. She was floating. Let her be.

"It was a bomb, Pam. Must have had a GPS trigger. I think Tomas stuck it under the car before I killed him._"_

She had no idea what he was talking about. And he sounded different. Why would Bill be talking to Pam?

"Yes, she's alive."

Yes.

"Yes, she's had my blood. Her arm was broken. Her face was burned. I thought it unwise to leave her as such. It would have slowed us down."

Her arm felt fine. Her face...? She didn't quite understand the concept. Sight and touch were abstract. She felt no pain, only a curious lightness.

"Yes, I'm sure it was a bad idea. So be it."

She didn't understand.

"I know what I'm doing."

* * *

She became aware of her toes first, and then her fingers: they came alive one by one with hot prickles that made her cry out. The sensation spread to her feet, her hands, her arms, until it seemed her whole body was exposed to flame. She whimpered, then cried out. She was burning up.

"Shhh," he said. "Try to be quiet."

She cracked her right eye open and regretted it immediately: the car's overhead light, dim as it was, made her whole eyeball seize up. She covered her face with her hands and moaned.

"You'll feel better in a few minutes," he said.

Was she drunk? Hungover? Had she somehow forgotten the biggest bender of her life? That couldn't be it; she hadn't been drunk since that party of Jason's, the only one at which she'd ever really let loose and tried to have fun, where she'd overdone it on the punch and thrown up in Tara's hair. She cringed even now at the memory.

Had she burnt out on the telepathy somehow? Had a bad response to medication? Developed an allergy? Or, Hell, been hit by a car?

The car.

The fireball.

Eric, screaming her name.

Burning: her arm snapping like a brittle seashell as she landed on it, batting furiously at a piece of burning metal that had landed right beside her head. The hideous pain of that fire on her cheek, charring her skin, melting her flesh. Screaming, screaming, screaming.

Eric.

She forced both eyes open, wincing at the dull fluorescent glare. After a moment, her vision swam into focus. She was laid out in the back seat of another car, much more spartan than the Mercedes: the rough cloth interior had left a pinprick pattern on her skin. And Eric was in the front seat, driving faster than she could imagine was legal.

His eyes caught hers in the rear view mirror and he grinned at her. Suddenly she was tearful. "You saved me."

"I did."

"My arm..." She moved it. It ached, a little, but was whole. In dread and wonder, she touched a finger to her charred cheek. It was whole. "You healed me."

"I did. And now I am taking you further from anyone who can harm you."

"Where?"

"North."

* * *

_I had a dream you came to me_

_Saying you shall not do me harm anymore_

_And with your knife you evicted my life_

_From its little lighthouse on the seashore_

That woman again, with that voice, on the radio. It made her think of Bill, her Bill, the red tears that coursed down his face as he beat her. She would have done anything for him to be here, to make it so that night had never happened. She craved the feeling of his body next to hers and the sight of his face, his worried frown, the crinkle of his eyes as he smiled. This was the man she knew and loved. But there was a disjunction: this was not the man, truly. She could not map her heart's truths onto a reality in which Bill's tears were false and his smiles a lie. Such was the rift in the fabric of her understanding, and it bled and burned and ached like a rend in her flesh.

And here was this pale man with his cornsilk hair and his stone face, he of the quirked mouth and the reluctant words. His silence was somehow a strength. She knew somehow that in that silence was steadfastness. Bill had been all outpour and need. This man was a stemmed flow, held in.

The memory hit her then: Bill hadn't loved her; he had been addicted to her. Addicted to her fairy nature. He had loved her for what, not who, she was.

_But isn't that the same reason you loved him?_ she asked herself. _Because you'd had his blood?_

It was the love-potion fallacy. Forced love was not true love. Perhaps this was why humans and vampires could never work: any such relationship would be founded on a fundamental falsehood.

On the other hand, how was it any different from human "chemistry"? Why do we sometimes seem so good together on paper, but there's no flame? Why do we sometimes go for partners with whom we're so badly matched? There is something inherent, something unspeakable, that bonds certain of us together. It is no more controllable than the colour of our eyes.

It still scared her, the idea of allowing herself to open up to another vampire. To Eric. She glanced at Eric as he drove: his muscles bunched as he steered the car, his lips set, thin and determined. His eyes seemed nearly to glow.

"Are we going somewhere safe?" she asked.

"As safe as we can," he said. "But I will not let anything happen to you."

Bill, on the other hand, was going to sell her blood. _Sell it!_ The more she thought about it - it ripped at her every time, but she forced herself to reason it through - the sicker it made her feel. If others had also become addicted to her, what then? If others had used her to walk in the sun, what would happen to humanity? Would Bill - or more likely, Sophie-Anne - have held her captive as a permanent blood-donor, her blood to be sold to the highest bidder? Or would it have been lethal for her? She was the only part-fairy she knew. She'd have been at a premium.

"Bill would have meant my death," she said, choking on the last word. She swallowed. "Or worse, a half-life, in a cage or something, in Sophie-Anne's house. It would have been hell." With every word, her horror grew, along with a wild, almost hysterical sense of relief.

"That's why I'm taking you away from Bon Temps. That won't happen to you. I won't allow it."

"What are we going to do, though? They know they could make millions off of me. You saw Sophie-Anne's house. You saw what she spends, how much money she needs. You know how valuable I am. And you know how obsessed she is with the day. She won't let go of me so easily. All they have to do is find me, and..."

"Sookie." He reached back and gripped her hand, slowing the car, bringing it to a stop along the rocky shoulder of the highway. "_I will not allow it. _I..." His fangs came down. "They are after us. They are dangerous, yes. You'll have to help me. But I will keep you safe." He hesitated. His eyes blazed, compelling her to hold his gaze. "We're already in Quebec. Soon we'll stop for the day. We will sleep." For a few moments he stroked her palm with the ball of his thumb, and her heart began to pound.

His phone rang.

"Yes?"

Pam's voice, muffled.

"Shit." He gunned the engine again. "Change of plan, Sookie. We're going north sooner than I thought. Are you well enough to drive?"

Note: the lyrics included in this chapter are from another Newsom song, "Kingfisher". Her album _Have One On Me_ seems to be the soundtrack to this story.


	6. Chapter 6

Note: Sorry this is so short. More tonight, I hope.

* * *

"_I've heard it all before, Sookie. I never talk. I never tell anyone how I'm feeling. I'm cold. I'm closed off. In the past few decades it's been 'emotionally unavailable.' You're not the first to tell me these things. And..."_

_ "And I won't be the last, right? Is that what you're saying?" They stood at opposite ends of the room, which was small and hot. A table stood between them. She wanted to scream at him, and to run and hide, and to collapse into a heap of sorrow, and to run to him and hold him, all in equal measure. So she stood, paralyzed._

_ "That is not what I'm saying."_

_ "Have you ever thought about what I'm giving up for you? The daylight! Having a normal life, with a normal man, doing normal things! For the love of God, _children! _I have given up so much for you."_

_ "Do you think you're the only one giving up anything?" He'd raised his voice now. His Nordic accent was sibilant and made each word linger. "Do you have any _fucking _clue what I've been doing for the past several _centuries? _Fucking and killing and fucking and killing and not giving a shit. And now I give a shit and half the time I wish I didn't."_

_Sookie started to cry. Eric raged silently for a moment, and smashed his hand through the table. It splintered._

_ "Sookie, goddamnit. I just don't know what to do. I love you. But love isn't everything."_

* * *

Imagine for a moment that you are driving in the Canadian Maritimes, at the change of seasons when fall is beginning to slip away into winter. You'll have crossed from Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick by ferry. Perhaps your car will have exploded not far from the ocean, and so you'll pick up a new one with cash at a run-down dealership on the edge of a small town. The dealer will be small and wiry, with a graying mullet and a missing tooth in the back; he will call you "sir" or "ma'am" and will be glad to see you go. The car will smell of sea oats and cigarette smoke. The Check Engine light will be on.

It won't be long until you reach a sliver of Quebec. There, you'll run into a big problem: the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It stabs like a stiletto into the heart of Canada's east, eventually slimming to the St. Lawrence River. Here, though, you'll have an expanse of grey and choppy water before you.

You approach in the hours before dawn. You find safe passage for you, your companion and your baggage: a bedroll made of blackout curtains, one made of feathers, a few morsels of food, a few spare clothes. The boat is rusted along the edges and named something in French that you can neither understand nor pronounce, but seems sturdy enough.

The sky begins to lighten as you approach the opposite shore. A car, arranged by a few terse phone calls, is waiting there for you. It is black and unobtrusive.

You help your companion into the blackout bedroll, lay him out across the backseat. He is tall and it is cramped. You lie alongside him on an edge of the seat for a long moment, arms around him. His eyes are blue as a glacier's heart.

You kiss him. It is the sweetest kiss you have ever had. It is long and slow and you revel in the taste of each other. It lingers. Neither you nor he want it to end. You would be perfectly happy to stay in this moment, in this kiss, for the rest of your life.

But it is light, and you must go on.

You pull the bedroll down over his face. Then you get up, close the door, get behind the wheel, and drive.

North.


	7. Chapter 7

Note: I am kind of amazed at how many people seem to be reading this story. Say hello, eh?

Enjoy this one. (Lest you thought I was never going to write any sex... there's going to be plenty. Just be patient.)

* * *

_How could it be, she thought, that she could feel so warm?_

"_Breathe, lover," he said._

_His arms engulfed her. There was so much of him. He was so tall and broad and deep it seemed as though he filled every inch of space in her world._

"_Just breathe."_

_She took a deep breath. He lay on top of her, both of them nude. She felt as though she would burn up._

_His fangs slipped into her. The bite always came with pain. She had learned, though, to associate this particular pain with what would come next. She gasped and let out a small cry as he sucked at her. It was a strange feeling, being drained of her life's essence, and yet feeling as if her skin could conduct electricity. _

_A moment later, his tongue lapped at the blood that had spilled onto her skin and onto the pillow below._

"_Keep breathing."_

_As he slipped into her, he kissed her. She tasted copper and iron. He pushed, pulled back, pushed again; kissed her neck, her cheek, her eyelids. She threw her head back and cried out. She had never felt so alive, so beautiful. So _full. _She clutched him, raked her fingernails across the skin of his back, clutched him to her with her legs. The sensation overtook her; her breath came in ragged gasps. She was nothing but need, raw need. Every bit of her was aflame. Everywhere he touched her, everywhere his fingers stroked her, a new fire blazed. His own body shuddered._

"_Breathe."_

_She did._

"_You are mine."_

_She was his._

* * *

It seemed to Sookie as though she was driving into winter.

Remote, she was used to. There were plenty of lonely highways in Louisiana, bordered by tangled forest and limned by mosquitoes. This desolation was something different. There was no snow - even here, it wasn't yet cold enough for that - but the world seemed to be getting ready for bed, to tuck itself in and sleep until spring. The trees were tall and thin and silent and frozen in the early morning air. The highway was paved, wide enough, but deserted. In Bon Temps, this would be about the time of year when folks started carrying a shawl with them in the evenings. Here, she shivered even in her sweater.

The sky was grey, shot through with threads of light. Eric slept.

"Drive until you can't anymore," he'd said. "Then take the car off the road, hide it, and sleep beside me. I'm not particularly warm when I'm out, but it's better than nothing."

"Will we be safe?" she'd asked him.

"Safer this way than any other way." He'd taken her hand and brought it slowly to his lips, kissed it gently. She'd shivered. "I am here with you."

And so she drove through the wilderness of northern Quebec. _North._ Truthfully, it was more like northwest; they were headed, eventually, to the Northwest Territories. It was huge and sparse and they would be able to hide.

The hours passed. She was used to spending time on her own - an upbringing as a telepath had taught her self-sufficiency. But she wasn't alone: she had a tall, strong, beautiful man in the backseat, and she longed for his company. She wanted someone to talk to. More specifically, she wanted to talk to _him_.

Radio reception was patchy. This car was old enough to have a tape deck, and the only tape she found in the dashboard compartment was a fraying mix-tape of '80s hair bands. Even that was preferable to silence after a while, though.

"Never thought I'd be listening to Pantera and driving through Canada," she giggled to herself, out loud. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but this is strange."

* * *

At about two in the afternoon, she found a likely hiding spot for the car: a little clearing behind some brush about thirty feet from the road. It took some tricky driving to coax the car over the tree roots between the road and the hiding place, but Jason had been hung over at the construction site plenty of times and had always called her to help him move the heavy equipment. To save face, he'd said. Never mind: it was a useful skill.

Eric had taken up the entire back seat. The only thing she could do was lie on top of him. She was surprised at how little - or rather, not at all - this disturbed her. _He would enjoy it if he were conscious_, she thought. A sudden rush of feeling came over her: she wanted, more than anything, to lift that cloth over Eric's face and to kiss him again.

_Don't be stupid. At least, don't be hasty. You're still Bill's. How can you be so fickle?_

But she wasn't being fickle. And she was not Bill's. It was a lie. Humiliated, yes; played for a fool, yes; hurt beyond imagining, yes. But love? It is curious how quickly love can curdle in the face of betrayal.

Here, sleeping, was the only man who had always been honest with her.

She slept.

They woke together a little after sunset to the howling of wolves.


	8. Chapter 8

Note: I won't be able to update every day forever, but this week has been a happy confluence of time and inspiration.

There have been a couple of questions about the italics at the beginning of chapters, and I will say: at least one of you is right about what they are. It should become more clear as the story goes on.

* * *

"_Do you always feel me?" she asked._

_ "A little. Sometimes more than others. Why?"_

_ "Because I always feel you. You're always like a little angel on my shoulder, helping me through the day."_

_ "Come now, Sookie. That's a bit cloying."_

_ "Okay, then, sometimes you're a devil."_

_ "I don't like that image either. Try a new one."_

_ "I'm not good at this. I don't know. You're like a passenger riding along in my body all the time, a little presence that keeps me aware of you. You're like a little flame that's always burning in the fireplace of my soul. You're like an itch that I can never, ever scratch, but I don't want to, because it feels good."_

_ "I don't think I've ever heard such inept, but heartfelt, descriptions of a blood bond." He circled her palm with his thumb, smiling down at her._

_ "I can't help it. I don't know what it feels like. It just feels like you, and you're there, and I love it."_

_ "How about: it feels right?" he asked. "Because that's what it feels like for me. It feels right."_

* * *

It is almost supernatural, the sound of a wolf's howl. It strikes at the heart of the soft and pink human like a primal warning: _you are in danger. Run._

Eric was immediately on alert, his fangs out. Sookie's heart pounded hard; she sat up, disheveled and disoriented. She had been woken roughly out of a deep sleep and she couldn't understand why someone was screaming at her. Was it a ghost? _Gran? _Was it a siren? Was there another fire? Was someone hurt? Was she?

The sound came closer: one howl followed by a chorus. They were searching for her.

Wolves.

"Alcide?" she managed. "Why...?"

"No," Eric said, shortly. "Shhh. I'm listening."

Startled, she realized that she was listening, too; the silence in her mind had been overtaken by a soft but malign murmur. It terrified her: it was like a deformed chorus, dissonant and strange, always just a little bit too low for her to hear or understand.

The trees outside the window, silent but benign in the daylight, became thin branched horrors by moonlight. Bushes grew claws. Wisps of cloud drifted like ghosts across the half-moon, high and cold. She felt surrounded, choked.

"Sookie, calm down," Eric whispered to her, low and soft. He put an arm around her. "What are you hearing?"

"Voices," she said. "Wrong voices."

"I knew it," he growled.

"What are they?"

"The Queen's creations. Don't look too closely at them, and please, please don't listen too closely, either. Let me deal with this."

Before Sookie could answer, he had opened the door and slid out, leaving the blackout bedroll in a tangle on the back seat. A moment later, the first wolf snarled and jumped out of the bushes to meet him.

It was a quick death for the wolf, mercifully. Eric feinted right, and the wolf followed his apparent direction; Eric's left hand ripped out the creature's throat, and it collapsed in a heap to crumple on a drift of fallen leaves. With his right hand, he picked it by its scruff and tossed it aside. Too curious to heed Eric's warning, Sookie caught a glimpse of the creature, and wished she hadn't. It was a wolf, she thought, but had too little fur and its legs had too many joints. She couldn't see clearly, but she thought it also had too many eyes.

The voices in her mind grew louder and more distinct, but no less wrong. They felt like poison to her. "_Shake_," said one. "_Where did the light go?_" said another. A third screamed long and high.

"Please, Eric," she whispered. "Make them stop."

Another wolf threw itself at Eric, and he dispatched it as well, ripping its head clean from its body. Two came at him at once, howling. He grabbed a fallen branch and thrust it at the rightmost, impaling it. The left one managed to rake Eric's arm with its claws; he roared, throwing his head back, before seizing one hind leg and smashing its head against a tree. Its skull exploded with black blood, throwing a spray of foul droplets across the trunks of the nearby trees.

A final wolf-thing stood at the edge of the clearing and stared. And then it changed.

"_Debbie,_" breathed Sookie.

It was true: the thing had once been Debbie Pelt. Now it was nearly unrecognizable. The rat's-nest hair was unchanged, as was the addict-skinny frame and the merciless smirk. Otherwise, she was a new creature, and as wrong as the wolves. Naked, she was covered in patchy hair and dirt, and her legs bent strangely at the knee. Sookie had been right: she had too many eyes. There was a third one in the center of her skull.

Her thoughts were like eavesdropping on Hell.

_Block her out, Sook, _she told herself. _Just block her out. You can do this, you know how, you've had practice. _But those thoughts were like nuclear waste: they seeped into her mind and turned it in on itself. Suddenly she knew that Eric didn't like her, that he was only here with her because he felt he had to be. Neither had Bill ever loved her. Even Sam had just given her the job because he felt sorry for her. Crazy Sookie. That's all she'd ever been, all she'd ever amount to. She didn't mean anything to anyone. Wouldn't it be much easier for everyone if she just drove the car into a tree? Yes, of course, that's what she should do.

She climbed into the front seat and started the engine.

"_NO!_" cried Eric, more panicked than she had ever heard him. She shook her head; her thoughts seemed fuzzy, all of a sudden. "Sookie! No! Don't!"

The thing that had been Debbie Pelt grinned at her.

Eric charged.

The fight was furious. Debbie was stronger than any of her companions, and faster. She and Eric flitted in and out of sight among the trees. Sookie could see very little, but she heard Eric's growls and Debbie's cries, and the poison thoughts turned full of rage. And then she saw the two of them halfway up a tree very near the car, and heard a low splattering sound, like a melon dropped from a great height. The voice in her head gave one final scream, sent one last message of pure, venomous hatred, and was silent.

Eric stood beside the mangled form of what had been Debbie. If it had been unrecognizable before, it was more so now. Sookie trembled, aghast at the thought of what she had almost done. _I can't believe it. _It had been so close. So very, very close. And what would have become of Eric?

She forced her shaking legs to carry her out of the car and over to Debbie's body. Then, entirely unladylike but caring not at all, she spat on it. "You gigantic fucking _bitch._"

Eric was in no mood for levity. "What did she tell you to do? What did she make you do? Sookie, tell me!"

"She made me think I was worthless," Sookie said. "She turned my mind dark. She twisted it, turned it the wrong way round. God, Eric, I was so scared. It was like I didn't recognize myself."

"That's the point of these things. Their goal is to affect the mind. It works, some, on normal people. Not on us. But for a telepath... I don't know how you withstood it." He reached out and held her to him tightly, and then winced as the gashes on his arm rubbed against her sweater.

"Oh, Eric!" she cried.

"I will heal," he said.

For a long moment, they were both silent. She looked up at him. The moon cast little light, and his eyes were shadowed. Yet, somehow, they still managed to immobilize her in their intensity.

"Take my blood," she said, finally. "It will help." She brushed her hair across her left shoulder, exposing the whiteness of her neck. The blood thrummed just below her skin. Even in the darkness, she could see the hunger in his eyes. And for the first time she understood how deep that hunger ran, and that it was not just for her blood.

He caressed her neck with one finger; she shivered. He kissed her softly in the place where her neck met her shoulder. And then he bit.


	9. Chapter 9

Note: This will be the last update for at least a couple of days, as life gets busy over the weekend.

I've tried to make this a good one; I imagine some of you have been anticipating something like this. Enjoy.

* * *

"_Would you become human again, if you had the chance?"_

_ "I don't know," he said slowly. They sat together on the porch, looking at the moon. Its white face was full to bursting, as if it had eaten its fill of stars. "I don't even know how to begin to think about that."_

"_Well, you'd be able to go out in the sun..."_

"_Sure. And no one would call me a fanger, and I'd be able to tan. And figuring out how I feel about things wouldn't be like trying to listen to music underwater."_

"_Exactly."_

"_And I'd be dead, Sookie. I'd have been dead a thousand years. I'd never have seen most of the things I have. I'd never have met Godric, never have made Pam. I'd never have met you, because I'd have died before Europeans ever set foot here."_

"_I'm not talking about that. I'm saying: if you could be human now, somehow, would you be?"_

"_I really, honestly don't know."_

_They were silent for a moment. _

"_My turn to ask."_

"_Okay..."_

_ "Would you become a vampire, if given the chance?"_

* * *

There is a misconception that the bite of a vampire is not painful; or, at least, that the pleasure outweighs the pain. This latter may be true at times - and for some with particular proclivities, of course - but make no mistake. There is always pain.

On the other hand, without pain, there could be no pleasure. Perhaps the power of the vampire is tied up in this. The pain is counterpart to the pleasure. Each amplifies the other.

From the very beginning, from their first time together, Bill had always bitten her. For him, the association was different: food and sex, pure libido. There was none of the complex death-wish of the human portion, the ecstatic confusion of _eros_ and _thanatos_. For vampires, things were often more simple. Sookie sometimes envied them. To be strong, powerful, cold. The life of a predator must be better than that of prey.

That word: _prey._ It sparked something in her. She had been Bill's girlfriend, his lover, his confidante. But over and above all of that, she had been his prey. He had conducted his business without regard for her. He had taken her and used her when he felt it necessary. He had deceived her when it suited him and manipulated her into loving him. And, most disturbingly, he had _loved her_ - but not as she had loved him. He had not seen her as an independent being. He had loved her as something to be consumed.

And despite Eric's hunger for her - despite the fact that, even now, he had wounded her neck and was sipping her blood - she knew that this was something different.

* * *

"Gentle," she whispered as his fangs opened her neck.

"Always," he whispered back to her, his lips moving on her skin. This, too, was different. Bill had been single-minded in his bloodlust. Eric drank from her, yes, but he teased her too, drawing patterns on her neck with his tongue. He traced the line of sinew alongside her throat up to her jaw and across to her ear, biting gently, carefully. Her breath came unevenly; she gripped him tightly.

"Do you know what you're doing to me?" she asked him softly.

"I have lived a thousand years," he said, low in his throat. "I know exactly what I am doing."

Perhaps this would be the thing to sweep the horror of the past half hour from her mind. She had not counted on such a thing. Except - of course she had. She knew she sometimes lacked in self-awareness, but she didn't think there was a woman alive who could resist this man for long. Alone in the wilderness with Eric Northman. How could she have possibly doubted that this would happen?

"Where?" she asked.

"The back seat of the car." That quirked smile again.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"That's where your sleeping bag is. Grab it and follow me."

* * *

He laced his fingers through hers and led her deeper into the woods, out of sight of the dead wolf-things. "Forget them," he said. "They aren't worth your consideration."

"Are you sure we will be safe?"

"Yes."

The tree-line gave way suddenly to patchy grass, littered with a few rocks here and there. Patches of lichen competed with patches of frost on a boulder that hunched a few feet to their right. "Here?" she asked, doubtfully.

"We're not finished."

At the edge of the clearing, hidden, was a small cabin. It was nearly impossible to make out in the dim light of the moon, dappled further by the branched canopy above. "Again, you have got to be kidding me," said Sookie. Her Louisiana instincts told her that if there weren't gators in that thing, there had to be at least two kinds of poisonous snakes and at least five brown recluses. She had no desire to be bitten by anything except Eric Northman, thank you very much.

"Trust me," he said. And, of course, she did.

When she looked inside, she finally understood. This was another of his hideaways. It was hardly four-star, but the carpets looked clean, the curtains dusted, and the bed... well.

"Who the heck is your day man all the way out here? How many do you have?"

"Shhhhhhh," he said, and kissed her.

* * *

If she could have snipped a piece of her life off, tied it up at each end, and kept it with her to revisit whenever she felt like it, that night with Eric would have been it.

She hadn't realized until then how much she had wanted him. Not just since he had rescued her; since she had met him. She had become so used to shoving those feelings down into the deepest part of herself that she hadn't quite understood how powerful they were, and how they would come flooding into her once she released them.

When he kissed her, that hunger awoke in her as well, and she devoured him. He tried to break off the kiss for a moment, just to throw her feather sleeping bag onto the bed for them, but she feared somehow that if she let him go, some spell would be broken. She shook her head and pulled him down onto her, on the clean but bare mattress.

She felt him smile against her mouth.

Gently, gently, he pulled away from her, only to slip a finger under her sweater and her shirt, to rest against her stomach. "This is what I want," he whispered. He ran his finger up her ribs, across her breasts, and up to the hollow of her throat. "This." He took both hems together in his other hand and pulled them over her head. "This." He slid his hand under her back, unhooked her bra, and pulled it off of her. "Now tell me what you want."

Bill had never asked her what she wanted.

Oh, to hell with Bill.

"This," she said. She took his own shirt and pulled it over his head in one smooth motion; he bowed his head to help her. Moonlight streamed through the single window and over the planes of his chest. Each muscle was profiled in stark black and white. His face was half in shadow.

"Oh, God, Eric, you're beautiful. I have never seen anything like you." She reached out to touch him. "Are you really here? You're real, aren't you?"

He gave a low laugh. "Please allow me to show you how real I am."

Sinuously, fluidly, he bent to kiss her stomach, dipping his tongue into the line of muscle that ran along its center. She shivered and closed her eyes. He worked the button of her jeans open, unzipped them and pulled them off with one hand; he took one finger of the other and laid it gently, then firmly, on the thin cotton that covered the center of her. She could not believe that this was happening.

"Please," she said, and he did.

In less than a moment her underwear were off, too, tossed in a pile on the floor, and then his tongue was on her. She gasped; she couldn't help it. She could think of nothing but the feeling of his mouth, its warmth, the slick rub of his tongue against the place that gave her the most pleasure. _Eric,_ she thought, through the haze. _Oh, God, this is him. The man who has that body, the beautiful man, is down between my legs. _Her head rolled to the side. Through the pale curtain of her hair she looked at him, at the muscles moving in his shoulders, at the sweep of his hair. He looked up to see her watching him, and smiled. "Do you like it?" he whispered against her flesh.

She tried to reply but couldn't. The well of her words had run dry. She opened her mouth and nothing came out but a low, hungry sound that she didn't recognize.

Slowly he moved, and then a little faster, and faster still. His fingers were long and lithe, and they played as his tongue tasted her. The muscles in her legs trembled. She felt as if her entire being were centred on the place between her legs. Her existence radiated from where Eric's mouth met her skin.

And then suddenly there was a moment when she felt as though she was on the edge of a cliff, and then she fell, and flew. Her hands clenched into fists, her back arched, every muscle in her body sang. The most intense pleasure, the most beautiful sensation she had ever felt exploded from within her and raced through her body until she was consumed. She thought she cried out his name, but she wasn't sure whether she truly had, or whether she had been struck unable to speak.

He was on her, and then in her. She felt every part of his body against her, the delicious weight, the exquisite slip of skin on skin. He put both arms around her, and she felt as though she existed in a universe of nothing but him: his scent mixed with hers, the soft sweep of his hair on her face. He said her name in a low voice that belied a sort of desperation, and she realized, suddenly, that he had been waiting for this as long as she had.

They rocked together, slick with sweat, fueled by hunger and need. He kissed her cheeks and her eyelids, licked at the place on her neck where he had bitten her, kissed her there and made her shudder. His breath was hot against her ear. He pushed into her harder, faster, taking her breath away, and then he crushed her to him, crying out. She felt his whole body shudder at once, and held him, riding it through with him.

They collapsed together onto the bed, hot and disheveled, breathing hard. A certain lassitude came over her. Her muscles felt loose. A smile crept across her face. Contentment spread through her body like morning light through a window.

She took both of his hands and laced their fingers together. "You're real."

"I am," he said.


End file.
